Mauritius (formerly the Île de France) was a French colony from 1715 until it was ceded to Britain in 1810, and after this date French continued to be the language of culture. Reunion (formerly the Île Bourbon) has been a French possession almost uninterruptedly since 1649 and is now a DOM [see DOM-TOM]. The literary contribution of both islands was considered a part of the French tradition in the 18th and 19th c. In the late 18th c. the poems of Parny and Bertin (both of settler families) represented Reunion, while
In the 19th c. the work of the Mauritian poet Thomi Pitot de la Beaujardiève (1779-1857) was heavily influenced by Béranger. However, François Chrestien (1767-1846), in Le Bobre africain (1882; bobre: guitar), introduced references to African culture and included a number of poems in Creole. Leconte de Lisle, leader of the Parnassians, and Léon Dierx, elected ‘prince des poètes’ after Mallarmé's death, were the two great 19th-c. poets from the Île Bourbon.
During the first half of the 20th c. the literary production on both islands followed the general tendencies of Romanticism and Symbolism. On Mauritius, Léoville l'Homme (1857-1928) and, most notably, Robert Edward Hart produced significant and at times more obviously Mauritian poetry. The influence of Surrealism is visible in the later volumes of Loys Masson. His work, most particularly his novel Le Notaire des noirs (1961), includes important contributions to a specifically Mauritian literature. The texts of Malcolm de Chazal, for example, Sens plastique, though clearly in the tradition of André Breton, are often rooted in a recognizably Mauritian landscape. André Masson has produced a number of esoteric religious writings and Édouard-J. Maunick, whose work includes an African dimension, is sometimes associated with the literature of négritude. Africa is also important in the poetry of André Legallant. Marcel Cabon, in a number of works, but most notably his novel, Namasté (1965), uses clear, uncomplicated language to depict ordinary Mauritian life. Some Creole phrases are incorporated into the French.
On Reunion, the ‘francotropisme’ (to use a neologism created by the Mauritian literary historian Jean-Georges Prosper) of the 19th c. continued into the first half of this century. The publication in 1951 of Jean Albany's collection Zamal represents the beginnings of a specifically réunionnais poetry, rooted in the history, landscape, and culture of a particular island, rather than an unspecified ‘exotic’ space, seen from the perspective of France. He has also written a P'tit glossaire: le piment des mots créoles (1974) and a Supplément (1983).
Boris Gamaleya, in his long poem Vali pour une reine morte (1972), dramatically juxtaposes the major ‘figures’ of the island—‘l'île reine’, ‘l'esclave révolté’, ‘le chasseur de nègres marrons’. It is a violent text which emphasizes the diversity of the island, manifest in the peoples, landscapes (and seascapes), flora, and fauna.
A more overtly militant text is the long poem by Alain Lorraine, Tienbo le rein (1975), dedicated ‘aux z'enfants de la misère de ce pays qui vient’. Other poets are Gilbert Aubry (bishop of Reunion), Agnès Guéneau, Jean-Henri Azéma, and Riel Debars.
A roman réunionnais emerged later. The term is used by Anne Cheynet as the subtitle to her work Les Muselés (1977). Axel Gauvin's Quartier Trois-Lettres (1980) and Agnès Guéneau's La Terre Bardzour, Granmoune (1981) also depict, in simple language, the poverty and deprivation experienced by many on the island. Gauvin's novel is also interesting in its language, which reads as an accessible Creole or obviously creolized French. He has answered those who accuse him of unacceptable compromise by translating the work into standard réunionnais Creole—Kartyé trwa lèt (1984). Daniel Honoré's Louis Redona (1980) is one of the few novels in Creole.
A number of important historical novels have also been written: Firmin Lacpatia's Boadour (1978) about Indian indentured labour in the 19th c., Jean-François Sam Long's Terre arrachée (1982), and Daniel Vaxelaire's two novels about slavery in the 18th and 19th c.: Chasseur d'esclaves (1982) and L'Affranchi (1984).
[Belinda Jack]
Bibliography
- J.-G. Prosper, Histoire de la littérature mauricienne de langue française (1978)
- D.-R. Roche, Lire la poésie réunionnaise contemporaine (1982)
